I'd Like To Be Under the Sea

Having finally completed and contributed "Don't Pass Me By" to the Beatles' White Album, Ringo Starr needed a break from the group, which was part of the reason he walked out of the White Album sessions and stayed away for ten days.  In that time, he took his family to Sardinia for what Americans call a vacation and what the Brits call a holiday.  The break proved to be beneficial for Ringo, as it not only allowed him to recharge himself and recommit himself to the Beatles, but it also allowed him to further his nascent songwriting abilities. 

Ringo and his family were staying on a boat owned by his good friend Peter Sellers, where he first tasted calamari - squid - and found it somewhat rubbery. The captain of the boat regaled Ringo about some of the local marine life around the island, including the octopus - which turned out to be a delicacy in Sardinia.  He told Ringo that octopuses like to collect stones and shells and arrange them in patterns on the sea floor, as if they were in a garden. Ringo, who was frustrated with the escalating tension in the Beatles, thought of how he'd like to just jump into the sea and relax in an octopus's garden.  And so a new song, which debuted on Abbey Road, emerged from our hero.   

"Octopus's Garden" instantly recalled "Yellow Submarine," that other Beatles song about going under the surface of the ocean to find peace - which was sung by Ringo as well.  But there are a couple of differences.  First, Ringo takes us under the sea without a vehicle, which is an important distinction.  The black American poet and activist Amiri Baraka famously despised "Yellow Submarine" because he heard it as a metaphor for white people isolating themselves from the problems of the outside world.  (If there is a milestone marking the point where white music and black music began to be as segregated from each other as it was before Elvis Presley and Little Richard, this may be it.)  Unlike "Yellow Submarine," which is about going undersea in a hermetically sealed craft, "Octopus's Garden" envisions the joy of swimming in the ocean and being at one with nature, communing with the aquatic life below rather than being separated from it.   

The other thing about "Octopus's Garden" is that it's not a psychedelically inspired song like "Yellow Submarine."  Here, Ringo employs a country and western vibe, producing a sound faintly foretelling the country-rock sound that would dominate the Los Angeles music scene and American radio in the early seventies.  For a nice touch, he added the sound of bubbles being blown in the instrumental bridge.  If there's anything psychedelic about this song, it's not intentional.  George Harrison, who loved the line "We would be warm below the storm," said that "Octopus's Garden" ought out spiritual fulfillment in he same manner of his own songs.  "It's like this level is a storm," George said, "and if you get sort of deep in your consciousness, it's very peaceful. So Ringo's writing his cosmic songs without noticing."

Ringo brought "Octopus's Garden" to the Get Back sessions in January 1969, and a clip from the Let It Be documentary shows Ringo, George and producer George Martin working on the song for possible inclusion on what became the Let It Be album.  (It didn't, of course, and Let It Be is one of only two Beatles albums on which Ringo does not have a lead vocal.)  The Beatles began recording it in April 1969, with Chris Thomas and the group co-producing, for indeterminate future use, as Abbey Road hadn't been begun with any seriousness just yet.  The song would be completed that July.

The genius of Octopus's Garden is that, like "Yellow Submarine," it was conceived as a children's song, except that, while "Yellow Submarine" has elements of a drunken Salvation Army band tune, Ringo makes it clear that his song is pointedly meant to comfort children, as "Octopus's Garden" presents the octopus not as a scary sea monster but as a welcoming creature.  The friendly octopus will let you in his garden where every boy and girl, regardless of race, creed, or color, know they're safe, swimming around the coral and resting their heads on the ocean floor.

Small wonder that Ringo turned his song into a 2014 children's book, an illustration from which by Ben Cort is shown above.

The song has been very good to Ringo over the years, being selected for generations of grammar-school choral groups to sing, being used in a Muppets segment on "Sesame Street" to teach kids about the number eight, and appearing on the set list of many an All-Starr Band show.  Even if Ringo had never written another song again (fortunately, in his solo career, he did - "It Don't Come Easy" may be his best song ever and one of the best hit singles of 1971), he assured a place for himself as a songwriter in his own right with this unforgettable tune.